Artist Study: Monet

I really love Charlotte Mason's ideas about teaching.  

One of them being Artist Study.

Our artist this term is Claude Monet (1840-1926).

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Other than just being fun, the study of an artist and his works provides a few important things to the kids.  

One:

They become familiar with the works of the great artists and their lives.

Opening up our Artist Print Journals today (simple photo books from the dollar store that we personalized with fabric covers), they discovered a few "old friends":  N.C. Wyeth and his beautiful scenes from Robin Hood and  Robinson Crusoe (among others)---stories that Ella has read in the last few years, and that my boys are familiar with, Raphael, and Grant Wood (their favorite is Death on the Ridge Road probably because in general they tend to be interested in things that are mysterious and a bit foreboding). 

 They may not remember everything we talked and noticed about each painting, or all the titles, or the dates, or every detail of the artist's life that we covered.  

But the images are familiar to them.  Some of them are well-loved.  

They are forever printed into their souls.

Two:

They provide an opportunity to work on what Charlotte Mason calls the Habit of Attention.

We study a painting each week.  Not ad infinum.  But keenly, for sure.  

We look at it.  Really look at it.  

"What is the painting about?"

"What details do you notice that perhaps you didn't see right away?"

"What is the story that may be happening?"

"What is the weather like?"

"How did the artist choose his paints, lines, brush strokes, etc. to show this?"

"What colors did he use and why?"

etc.  

And then we close our eyes.  And see how much detail we can remember.  A narration, of sorts.  

A game of memory with some of the great images of history. 

It trains their minds and eyes in the habit of really looking at something, at noticing details, at questioning the why of what they see....and of placing these things firmly in their memory. 

Three:

It provides inspiration.

We talk about how one artist differs in style from another.  This time around it is Impressionism, of course.  We talk about how a painting doesn't have to look like a photograph.  That it can be an impression of a scene.  A softer, less exact way of seeing the world.  A focus on color and light.  This talk gives them ideas to try when they paint their own paintings.  And also the thought that there are so many ways to do a thing.  Not one right way.  But many, in this life. 

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We do this once a week.  

Last week we studied The Waterlily Pond 1899 and read the picture book Monet:  The Painter Who Stopped the Trains.

Today we studied Woman with Parasol 1875. 

 It is so lovely.  It makes the dreary January seem a little lighter.

We also watched a charming DVD, fiction loosely based on fact, called  Monet: Shadow and Light.